


Look upon your children (wandering in the wilderland)

by queerly_it_is



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Support Group
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 08:36:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerly_it_is/pseuds/queerly_it_is
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Late-night coffee meetups for two overextended parents of teens involved in supernatural hijinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look upon your children (wandering in the wilderland)

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this came from. Originally posted on tumblr, reposted here since it got way beyond what can be called a drabble.

It’s a—Well he doesn’t know what it is. A club maybe, if that didn’t make it sound like something they should be whispering about in a treehouse. And he hates the term ‘support group’; he’d tried one for grieving spouses all of twice and it soured him for life.

So it goes unnamed, this thing they do, and that’s fine with him. The fewer burdensome terms he has to deal with the better. Terms usually mean paperwork anyway.

“Hey,” Melissa says, all tired sigh and wrinkled scrubs under her jacket as she drops into the chair across from him.

She smiles, worn thin at the edges of her mouth when he pushes a coffee over to her, like the table’s that big anyway and she wouldn’t realise it was for her.

The coffee shop’s empty this late, just a few haggard looking kids from the community college, some people in pulled-apart business dress tapping at laptops, a girl ( _who’s probably in her late twenties_ , he acknowledges with a wince at himself) in an apron pushing a mop along the floor.

It’s funny, he’d been ready to drop ten seconds ago, and now he’s smiling, feeling lighter around the chest. “Tough shift?”

She hums around the lid of the cup, shrugs a shoulder. There’s a strand of hair slipping over her ear, catching the buzzing light overhead, gold around the dark. “No more than usual,” she says. “Most exciting thing was a prank gone wrong; pair of kids super glued together at the… well.” She shrugs again, and there’s a wider smile pulling at John’s mouth.

“Like that incident in ’99?” He winces again. He’d give anything to get rid of that memory. Or just the glue marks on the arm of the couch.

Melissa snorts a little. “No, thank god. But where d’you think I learned how to unstick ‘em?”

He scoffs, shakes his head and takes a drink of his coffee, not able to stop the grimace.

“Ouch,” Melissa says, “decaf again?”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m up to half days; we compromised on the mornings since otherwise I’d probably crash the cruiser or shoot myself in the leg.”

She grins, enjoying his pain far too much, he thinks.

“You shouldn’t mock,” he says, going for serious. “Don’t think I can’t get Stiles to put a word in with Scott about the takeout.”

Melissa makes an exaggerated look of shock, and John bites his cheek against the smile.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I?” He arches an eyebrow. “I’m the Sheriff, I can get away with anything I like.”

She laughs and it crinkles her eyes at the corners. “My son has superpowers,” she warns him, pointing a finger across the table. “Which he kept secret from me while he was off doing who knows what. I think the guilt of that’ll buy me enough fast food delivered to the hospital to last a until I retire.”

John leans back in his chair, “Call it a truce then.”

Melissa puts her hand out for him to shake and he grins as he takes it. Her skin’s smooth and a little roughened around the knuckles, calluses nudging his palm as she lets go. There’s a pang he washes down with more godawful decaf.

“Oh for god’s sake,” she says, watching him with a kind of horrified fascination. “It’s just not natural, John.”

“Tell me about it,” he says, giving up on whatever’s left and pushing the cup away from him.

“Let me get you a real coffee, since you bought mine.” She pokes his cup with a finger. “I’m a health professional, I can’t just stand by and let you consume that stuff.”

“I think you have that backwards,” he tells her, smiling anyway. “Besides I’ll be up half the night.”

Melissa arches an eyebrow and looks at the clock across the room.

“Okay,” he concedes, hands out palm-up like a card dealer. “But you know what I mean.”

“Your funeral,” she says, drinking her coffee and sighing in bliss just to prod at him. He probably shoudn’t say he feels more energised from the last few minutes than the pot of burnt stuff he’s been drinking at the station managed. He’s tempted to, but he shouldn’t.

He raps his fingers on the table. “You know there’s a—a pack thing in a few nights?” He’s getting better at not stumbling over that stuff now. The terms.

Melissa nods, expression going a little more serious. “It’s not a big thing,” she says. “Apparently just a few—” she glances out at the wider room around them, “—just a few other werewolves from neighbouring packs, checking in, making sure there’s nothing… y’know.”

“Evil?” he says with an unamused snort.

She shrugs. “Anything that might be a problem outside of the town, I guess. Scott says it’ll be fine; Deaton’s hosting it somewhere out of way.”

“Did he say where?” John’s brain, tired as it is, runs through patrols that’ll need changing, the kind of on-call people he’ll need in case the whole thing goes belly up. How many aconite bullets he’s got left in the case in his office. Jenkins is still out sick, and he’ll need—

“The distillery,” she tells him, mouth twisting while her hand spins her cup in a half circle. He knows how she feels.

“Great,” he sighs, then gives her an exasperated huff. “You remember when it was just making sure they got up on time?”

“Not really,” she says, dry as she takes another drag of coffee.

He huffs again, tries to tell himself he’s not eyeing the menu above the counter. Or the brownies in the glass display.

“How’s Stiles,” Melissa asks, “with the whole—” she waves her fingers at his shoulder.

“He’s okay,” John says, tightness creeping into his gut remembering the slash marks on Stiles’ arm.

She leans in. “Okay as in he _says_ he’s okay, or okay as in actually okay. ‘Cause those are two different states of being, John.”

“Okay as in he’s stopped favouring the arm,” John tells her, like she hadn’t taken the bandages off and given Stiles the cream for the scarring John’s two hundred percent sure Stiles hasn’t even opened. “I’ve been watching for infection, just like you said.”

“Good. I made sure to remind Scott about—about—”

“How fragile my son is?” he says, sounding tired in a deeper way now. “Yeah. Just try telling Stiles that.”

Melissa smiles faintly. “Scott’ll watch out for him. It’s what they do.”

He nods. “And Scott’s doing okay with the whole alpha thing?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Honestly I’ve never seen him so… focused. Sometimes it makes me smile and sometimes I have to break out the wine so I don’t think about it y’know? How he looks after Isaac. And me,” she adds with a snort. “How grown up he got when I wasn’t looking.”

“You were looking,” John says before he can think about it. “But we’re not omnipresent, Mel.” He smiles, “As much as we might wanna be sometimes.”

“Oh no,” she says, laughing, “some things I genuinely _don’t_ want to know about.”

The smile creeps across his mouth. “Understood.”

She spins her cup between her hands again, frowns before she looks up. “I heard from his father the other day.” She rolls her eyes. “Or, well, his lawyer anyway.”

John runs through possibilities faster than he can track them, feet dropping flat to the floor under the table. He’s suddenly aware of the distance from his fingers to his holster, ingrained instinct roaring up too quick. “Everything okay?”

“He’s trying to dick out of his child support payments,” she says, jaw working. Her coffee sloshes behind its cardboard when she rattles it. “The son of a—he didn’t give enough of a damn to even show up at the hearings and now he’s—”

“Whoa,” John says, “okay, I get the picture.” Her hand’s on the table now, fingers half curled up, and he could—

He puts his palm on the tops of her knuckles, waits under her hand flattens all the way and then does the same. It’s not—they’re not holding hands.

“Does he want visitation?”

She scoffs, “I’d kill him before he got anywhere close.”

“I’d help,” John says, mouth running ahead of him again. Must be the decaf. He forces a smile when she looks up like she’s surprised. “I’m the Sheriff,” he says, and then, “You’ve told me enough about this guy. I wouldn’t lose a whole lot of sleep over it.” His fingers press a little at the bones of her wrist. “I’ve got out of state connections. At the very least I can have his car impounded.”

Melissa smiles helplessly, then shakes her head. “He won’t ask for visitation. Or if he does it’ll just be to screw with me. But I need that money; the house isn’t paid off yet and I’ve got Scott’s college fund to think about.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “But you’ve gone beyond the call so far, you’ll be fine.” A reassuring press with his palm. “Just tell me if you need… well, anything. We’re a team, now, remember? I need someone to help keep me above the water with this supernatural stuff. Not to mention someone who’ll let me drink actual coffee.”

She smiles, dropping back into her chair again. She puts her free hand on his, and John swallows like his throat’s dried out. Never trust decaf.

“Right,” she says. “Mutual floatation devices.”

John snorts a laugh, turns his hand enough to grip hers at an angle, fingers curling to meet her palm. It doesn’t feel as late.

“It’s a term.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Anais Mitchell's "Wilderland". Honestly I blame that song wholly for this fic.


End file.
